Travis
> In the conformist atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s, the individual
> was a threat. Like communist Russia, the system then was so weak that it
> was actually threatened by a single person standing up and saying, "This
> is bullshit!"
>
> That is not the case anymore. This current American juggernaut is the
> mightiest empire the world has ever seen, and it is absolutely immune to
> the individual. Short of violent crime, it has assimilated the
> individual's every conceivable political action into mainstream commercial
> activity. It fears only one thing: organization.
>
> That's why the one thing that would have really shaken Middle America last
> week wasn't "creativity." It was something else: uniforms. Three hundred
> thousand people banging bongos and dressed like extras in an Oliver Stone
> movie scares no one in America. But 300,000 people in slacks and white
> button-down shirts, marching mute and angry in the direction of Your Town,
> would have instantly necessitated a new cabinet-level domestic security
> agency.
>
> Why? Because 300,000 people who are capable of showing the unity and
> discipline to dress alike are also capable of doing more than just march.
> Which is important, because marching, as we have seen in the last few
> years, has been rendered basically useless. Before the war, Washington and
> New York saw the largest protests this country has seen since the 60s-and
> this not only did not stop the war, it didn't even motivate the opposition
> political party to nominate an antiwar candidate.
>
> There was a time when mass protests were enough to cause Johnson to give
> up the Oval Office and cause Richard Nixon to spend his nights staring out
> his window in panic. No more. We have a different media now, different and
> more sophisticated law-enforcement techniques and, most importantly, a
> different brand of protestor.
>
> Protests can now be ignored because our media has learned how to dismiss
> them, because our police know how to contain them, and because our leaders
> now know that once a protest is peacefully held and concluded, the
> protestors simply go home and sit on their asses until the next protest or
> the next election. They are not going to go home and bomb draft offices,
> take over campuses, riot in the streets. Instead, although there are many
> earnest, involved political activists among them, the majority will simply
> go back to their lives, surf the net and wait for the ballot. Which to our
> leaders means that, in most cases, if you allow a protest to happen.
> Nothing happens.
>
> The people who run this country are not afraid of much when it comes to
> the population, but there are a few things that do worry them. They are
> afraid we will stop working, afraid we will stop buying, and afraid we
> will break things. Interruption of commerce and any rattling of the cage
> of profit-that is where this system is vulnerable. That means boycotts and
> strikes at the very least, and these things require vision, discipline and
> organization.
>
> The 60s were an historical anomaly. It was an era when political power
> could also be an acid party, a felicitous situation in which fun also
> happened to be a threat. We still listen to that old fun on the radio, we
> buy it reconstituted in clothing stores, we watch it in countless movies
> and documentaries. Society has kept the "fun" alive, or at least a dubious
> facsimile of it.
>
> But no one anywhere is teaching us about how to be a threat. That is
> something we have to learn all over again for ourselves, from scratch,
> with new rules. The 60s are gone. The Republican Convention isn't the only
> party that's over.
>
> <http://www.nypress.com/17/36/news&columns/Taibbi2.cfm>
>
> Carl
>
>
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